What is Doctor Who Even Trying to Say Anymore?
Doctor Who has rarely been subtle about politics (“So the planet down below refused to stop the babies being born, but once they're born, they don't look after them?”- Ruby Sunday, Space Babies). But the underlying politics of season 2 of this new era of Doctor Who are about as confused as they’ve ever been. I think that Russell T Davies has good intentions, but the execution is often not well thought out. More often than not, the message that the show presents is not the message that was probably intended. In Lux, the Doctor makes multiple references to segregation and Jim Crow era laws. However, the rest of the (white) cast barely react to the Doctor and Belinda’s presence, and are friendly when they do, which serves to make the Doctor seem paranoid and overreactive. Given that he’s a black man in 1950’s Miami, his concerns are entirely justified, but the narrative doesn’t validate this at all. In Lucky Day, Conrad is presented as a right wing grifter and male manipulator whose entire raison d'être is to bring down UNIT. He is a violent denialist, killing his own allies and refusing to acknowledge that aliens exist, even when he meets them face to face. The trouble with all of this is that UNIT is a government funded military organisation. Framing Conrad’s beliefs as extremist and delusional implies that organisations like UNIT (i.e. the police, the military) are above reproach. Anyone who criticises these organisations, their use of public funds and their secretive operations, is aligned with murderous incels. The entire episode reads as copaganda. How dare you want to defund UNIT? Don’t you know that they’re trying to protect you?
And so we arrive at Interstellar Song Contest. Two Hellions – refugees from the destroyed planet Hellia – hijack the singing competition and try to murder the entire audience of three trillion people. Why? Well, the Corporation that funds the song contest invaded their planet, stole their resources, and then burned the planet to the ground when they were done. The Hellions are scattered and disenfranchised, with many people believing that they are witches and cannibals who destroyed their own planet and, as such, they suffer discrimination wherever they go. Nina Maxwell, who is running the song contest backstage, beseeches Wynn to stop, because she put her faith in her. “No one employees Hellions, but I did.” Wynn is unmoved, immediately proving that Nina should never have hired her by taking advantage of her position to orchestrate a devastating terrorist attack. When Nina calls Kid and Wynn monsters for murdering 100,000 people, Kid says “I’m only doing the things you expect of me.” The entire scene leaves a sour taste in my mouth, for reasons that I’m struggling to articulate. The story evidently wants the audience to sympathise with the Hellions while condemning their actions, but the narrative that Hellions are inherently dangerous isn’t particularly challenged. It sets up a dichotomy of good vs bad Hellions. Cora is a Hellion who has been mutilated to the point that she is passes as a non-Hellion. She is the “good” Hellion who has been divested of all of the parts of her that others would be threatened by: her horns, her language, her culture. Kid and Wynn are “bad” Hellions, unapologetic about their backgrounds, and are attempting to murder trillions. It is a classic case of taking a character with a legitimate grievance and making them do senseless acts of violence, in order to delegitimise their position.
The threat of this terror attack is supposed to be especially galling, because the three trillion people watching the Interstellar Song Contest are you. They represent the audience of Doctor Who far more so than the audience stand-ins in Lux did. This terrorist attack is a direct threat to you and your loved ones, for the crime of watching television. After all, why should you be held responsible for some faceless corporation doing terrible things many, many miles away from you? But the problem is, Kid and Wynn are right. This passive audience is complicit in the crimes of the Corporation. They watch the song contest and they buy the honey and they believe the propaganda being fed to them about the Hellions destroying their own world. They, like many people in the Western world, benefit passively from the subjugation and destruction of other cultures, whether they know it or not.
With the inclusion of the Interstellar Song Contest (a futuristic version of Eurovision) it’s hard not to make comparisons with Israel and Palestine. Obviously this is not a 1:1 allegory – the situation in Palestine is more complex than simple corporate greed – and there are probably other invasions that fit the bill more closely (the USA’s repeated salvoes into the Middle East for oil spring to mind). But the fact that in 2025, Israel is still allowed to perform at Eurovision, while Russia has been banned since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, means that the conflict is salient to the conversation. Eurovision whitewashes Israel’s atrocities just as the ISC whitewashes the Corporation’s. The ending of this episode is supposed to be uplifting. Cora sings a beautiful song in her native language, spreading awareness of the Corporation’s violent destruction of her home. Or maybe not. This is, after all, a broadcast sponsored by the Corporation. So instead of that, this is an aria for the dead, mourning the loss of her people and her culture. The audience of the song contest, if they even know that Cora is a Hellion, have no reason to come away from this performance feeling anything other than “isn’t it sad that all those people died” and “gee, maybe not all Hellions are evil”. This is a proclamation against direct action. The message is clear. Sing a pretty song for the dead; don’t fight for justice for the living.
But ultimately, in spite of the messy, misguided politics of the rest of the episode, the biggest problem in this episode is the Doctor himself. He is uncharacteristically cruel and violent, which wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but his lack of remorse is. He claims that Kid’s attempts to murder the three trillion people watching the ISC triggered him, because it made him think of his home planet. Why, then, does the destruction of Hellia not provoke a similar anger? He doesn’t acknowledge that he has been in Kid’s position, murdering the people he holds responsible, erroneously, for the destruction of his home planet. The Doctor tortures Kid, because he is Kid. The (almost) deaths of three trillion hit home for the Doctor and he loses himself in trying to punish his own dark reflection. After all, isn’t he also an orphan who uses a title rather than a name? A person who doesn’t remember ever having had parents? A lonely scion of a destroyed planet? With this justification, I could perhaps stomach the Doctor’s treatment of Kid, if the Doctor ever acknowledged what happened to Hellia in this episode. But he doesn’t. He lets himself succumb to anger and hurts Kid for attempting to kill three trillion people, but doesn’t spare a thought for the dead of Hellia. You’d think that a person who had witnessed his own planet destroyed (twice) would have some empathy for the Hellions who have lost their homes, their families, their culture, and are now being persecuted across the galaxy. But the Doctor doesn’t acknowledge their plight. Nor does he acknowledge the Corporation and the Interstellar Song Contest’s role in Hellia’s destruction. Kid and Wynn are sent off to the appropriately dystopian-sounding ‘Justice Monolith’, but there’s no mention of justice for the planet full of people who were exploited and murdered. The Corporation ends this episode the way it started: unchallenged, with Hellions as its scapegoats.